Every serious event happens in a single, unbroken flow of related happenings. A murder involves what the victim, the accused, and the bystanders said and did at the beating; a riot involves the destruction of property, the attack on troops, the breaking open of jails; a defamation suit involves not just the libellous letter but the correspondence around it. Section 4 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (BSA) makes all of that connected sequence — the res gestae — relevant, whether or not each specific fact is a fact in issue.
4. Relevancy of facts forming part of same transaction. Facts which, though not in issue, are so connected with a fact in issue or a relevant fact as to form part of the same transaction, are relevant, whether they occurred at the same time and place or at different times and places.
Illustrations.
(a) A is accused of the murder of B by beating him. Whatever was said or done by A or B or the bystanders at the beating, or so shortly before or after it as to form part of the transaction, is a relevant fact.
(b) A is accused of waging war against the Government of India by taking part in an armed insurrection in which property is destroyed, troops are attacked and jails are broken open. The occurrence of these facts is relevant, as forming part of the general transaction, though A may not have been present at all of them.
(c) A sues B for a libel contained in a letter forming part of a correspondence. Letters between the parties relating to the subject out of which the libel arose, and forming part of the correspondence in which it is contained, are relevant facts, though they do not contain the libel itself.
(d) The question is, whether certain goods ordered from B were delivered to A. The goods were delivered to several intermediate persons successively. Each delivery is a relevant fact.
Substantive rule preserved
Section 4 reproduces Section 6 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 (IEA) without any change in wording. The BPRD BSA-to-IEA correspondence table records "No change." The section is one of the most doctrinally influential in Indian evidence law — the statutory embodiment of the res gestae principle.
The four elements of the rule
The "transaction" concept
The section's central concept is "transaction". This is the term of art around which res gestae jurisprudence has been built. A transaction is a group of connected events forming a single unit — held together by proximity of time, unity of place, community of purpose, or continuity of action. What matters is not any one of those factors alone but the overall unity that makes the collection into a single, identifiable event or course of dealing.
The four illustrations show the range
Illustration (a) — murder and bystander statements. A is accused of murdering B by beating him. Whatever A, B, or the bystanders said or did at the beating, or so shortly before or after as to form part of the transaction, is relevant. This is the paradigmatic res gestae situation: contemporaneous statements and acts by anyone present at or immediately around the beating are received as part of the same transaction as the beating itself.
Illustration (b) — waging war and dispersed acts. A is accused of waging war by participating in an insurrection. The destruction of property, attacks on troops, and breaking open of jails during the insurrection are relevant, as forming part of the general transaction, even though A may not have been personally present at each specific act. Here "same transaction" spans multiple times and places and multiple actors, unified by the common insurrectionary purpose.
Illustration (c) — libel in correspondence. A sues B for libel in a letter forming part of a correspondence. Other letters in the same correspondence — even those not containing the libel itself — are relevant as forming part of the same transaction. The correspondence is the "transaction"; the specific libellous letter is the fact in issue.
Illustration (d) — chain of delivery. Whether goods ordered from B were delivered to A. Where the goods passed through intermediate persons, each intermediate delivery is a relevant fact — the "transaction" is the transmission from B to A, and each step in that transmission qualifies.
What Section 4 does not do
The section admits facts as relevant on the basis of transactional connection. It does not resolve the separate question whether a hearsay statement made during the transaction is admissible as substantive evidence of what it asserts. The distinction matters. A bystander's contemporaneous cry "A is stabbing B!" during the beating is admissible under Section 4 as part of the transaction — but whether it can be used to prove that A actually stabbed B (rather than merely to prove that a cry was made) is a further question governed by the doctrine of dying declarations under Section 26(a) or by the general rules on statements.
Placement in the general relevance framework
| Section | Function |
|---|---|
| 3 | Evidence may be given of facts in issue and relevant facts |
| 4 | Res gestae — facts forming part of the same transaction as a fact in issue or relevant fact |
| 5 | Facts constituting occasion, cause, effect, state of things, or opportunity |
| 6 | Motive, preparation, and conduct |
Key Takeaways
- Res gestae rule: facts not in issue but forming part of the same transaction as a fact in issue or relevant fact are relevant.
- Transaction concept: a single connected sequence — time, place, purpose, and continuity together making a unified event.
- Not limited to same time/place: the section expressly admits transaction-facts spanning different times and places.
- Four illustrations: the murder-and-bystanders case; the widespread insurrection; the libel-in-correspondence case; the chain-of-delivery case.
- Substantive rule unchanged from Section 6 IEA.
Conclusion
Section 4 is the statutory formulation of one of the most influential doctrines in Indian evidence law. It admits into evidence the whole surrounding transactional picture that gives the primary fact its meaning — the bystander's contemporaneous statement, the linked correspondence, the connected acts across places and times. The BSA has left the substantive rule of Section 6 IEA entirely intact; the case-law body developed around it — on when facts truly form the "same transaction" and when they merely happen to be close by — applies without adjustment. Together with Sections 5, 6, and 7, this section defines the outer edges of general relevance in Chapter II.